Apple and Samsung outstrip Nokia as top smartphone vendors in Q2

Q2 of 2011 is now almost over and the results are in for the smartphone shipments volumes. Just a week ago it became certain that Apple has surpassed Nokia in smartphone shipments for Q2 but now Samsung and HTC have released their numbers. Strategy Analytics confirm that Apple has come out on top with 20.3M shipped iPhones, Samsung is a whisker away with 19.2M in second place, while Nokia is the only Top 3 manufacturer to report a decline in year-to-year numbers with 16.7M (Q2 of 2010 - 23.8). Interestingly enough, HTC is probably at the fourth place with 12.1M smartphones shipped between April and June.

The only thing that stands between a certain fourth spot and HTC are the LG smartphone shipments results for Q2 2011. Since the manufacturer decided not to disclose the numbers and went with total phone shipments all we're left with is a guessing game. Still, some estimates point that LG plans to ship little over that 20M smartphones for the whole year so it couldn't have shipped more than HTC this quarter alone. We can't know for sure though. You can find HTC's detailed report here.

With the way the tides have turned in the last year, the smartphone market share has grown by 76.3%, which was reported by Alex Spektor, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics. The trend is that year after year smartphones will carve themselves a more important role in our lives.

Judging by the intense rumors of a 6 September iPhone announcement we could be looking at even more impressive Q3 Apple results.